Lacey Holloman, J.D. ’10 worked as a prosecutor for the district attorney in Midland County, Texas, for a decade before beginning work as a defense attorney in 2024. Her background in acting informs her approach to both roles.
“I view trials as a mini-performance — as their own little play,” says Holloman, who studied theatre and political science at Muhlenberg. “I’m telling the story to the jury. They’re my audience. It’s my job to make sure they understand what’s going on and to keep them engaged. We’re selling a story just like you would on stage.”
Holloman, a Texas native, chose Muhlenberg for its renowned theatre program. She didn’t set foot on campus until move-in day. Fortunately, she liked the school and liked the theatre program but she realized quickly she didn’t like acting enough “to try and make it — to do that struggle,” she says.
She sought a second field of interest and found it in law. She spent a summer interning for her dad’s cousin, a personal injury lawyer in Houston: “I really enjoyed even what I considered the boring parts of law — the very repetitive parts,” she says. She took the LSAT as a senior and chose to attend South Texas College of Law Houston.
“Justice doesn’t mean just one thing — you take into account what’s best for the defendant, what’s best for any victims, and what’s best for society as a whole. I always wanted to do my job with the utmost professional responsibility.”
—Lacey Holloman, J.D. ’10
She finished law school in 2013, a time when the market was overflowing with graduates who’d gone back to school because of the recession. She didn’t think she would like being a prosecutor, but a personal connection got her on the radar of the Midland County DA, and that office was hiring. She ended up really enjoying the work.
“I’m not a true believer in the [criminal justice] system, but I am a true believer in me,” she says. “Prosecutors in Texas, we take an oath that our job is to seek justice, not convictions. I always felt like I took that very seriously and I tried to treat every case with that in mind. Justice doesn’t mean just one thing — you take into account what’s best for the defendant, what’s best for any victims, and what’s best for society as a whole. I always wanted to do my job with the utmost professional responsibility.”
In her current role as a defense attorney with Dunham & Jones Law Firm, P.C., Holloman has a smaller caseload than she did as a prosecutor (120 instead of 200). She also handles more misdemeanors; by the time she left the DA’s office, she had worked her way up to being its felony chief.
“I was doing a lot of the serious offenses, like sexual assault cases, child abuse cases, murders, because we had a big uptick in murders over COVID,” she says. “This has been a nice break because the DWIs, while they’re serious and we take every case seriously because these are people’s lives, it’s much less intense than a child sexual abuse case.”
Holloman has used some of her Muhlenberg training very directly in her work. For example, when she was in the DA’s office, she designed an anonymous email survey to send to jurors after trials. She used what she learned from working with Professor of Political Science Chris Borick, in class and as a student worker in the Institute of Public Opinion, to inform her questions so she would get honest and accurate feedback. And she puts her performance skills to work whenever she’s in court.
“I’ve tried close to 100 jury trials and it’s always a performance,” she says. “I think of the courtroom as my stage now.”
